The Claim: Violent Video Games Make Young People Aggressive

THE FACTS -- Republicans and Democrats alike screamed government waste last March when a group of senators suggested spending $90 million to study how video games "and other electronic media" influenced children's behavior. Surely an important question, critics of the plan said, but $90 million?

Some believe that, in any case, the verdict is already in. This month, the American Psychological Association called for a reduction of violence in all video games, saying the evidence from 20 years of research on the subject was clear. They based their conclusion largely on the work of Kevin M. Kieffer, a psychologist at St. Leo University near Tampa, Fla., who prepared an analysis of dozens of relevant studies.

He found that, in general, children exposed to virtual bloodshed showed greater "short-term" increases in hostility toward peers and authority figures than those exposed to more benign games. And many of the studies included in the analysis were randomized, rebutting the notion that aggressive people are simply drawn to violent games, Dr. Kieffer found.

But a separate study, also published this month, concluded that violent video games have no "long-term," or permanent, effects on aggressive behavior. The study, by a researcher at the University of Illinois, was among the first of its kind to follow two groups of people for a month, some randomly assigned to play violent video games and some not.

In the end, the study's findings may be more in line with public opinion. On the day its findings were announced, a jury in Alabama reached a guilty verdict in the case of Devin Moore, who killed three people when he was 18 and as his defense blamed the video game "Grand Theft Auto."

THE BOTTOM LINE -- Studies generally show that violent video games can have short-term, or momentary, effects on children, but there is little evidence of long-term changes. ANAHAD O'CONNOR